Dissonant Lullaby
by Okobo-chan
Summary: One Shot: Sweet Sand it was awful. He was quite certain he'd heard Naruto, who had the operatic skills of a dying cat, carry a tune better. [GaaSaku]


Title: Dissonant Lullaby  
Pairing: Gaara/Sakura  
Rating: K  
Summary: "Sweet Sand it was awful. He was quite certain he'd heard Naruto, who had the operatic skills of a dying cat, carry a tune better."  
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me! If it did, this would have happened canon, sheesh.

**Dissonant Lullaby**

She was... She was _singing. _He blinked, lips curling into a sneer as he walked alongside his medical-ninja companion. Her head was tipped back, hair swaying as she walked, no, _swayed _in time to the vocalized tune. The light filtered through her hair, glinting off of her eyes and caressing her lips. Lips that were currently serenading him unconsciously. She'd started out humming under her breath, then slowly, breathlessly, adding words.

Sweet Sand it was awful. He was quite certain he'd heard Naruto, who had the operatic skills of a dying cat, carry a tune better. Maybe she'd tied her obi too tight this morning. The song was familiar, something he'd heard sung by numerous Leaf parents to numerous Leaf children to halt tears. A lullaby. Though, he couldn't imagine that Sakura's rendition would have had the desired effect on himself. Gaara was quite certain that if he'd been subjected as a child to what he was currently enduring the results would have been swift and bloody.

She shifted an octave, brushing errant strands from her lips. She should have tied her hair back this morning as he'd told her to, he grumbled under his breath.

Make that bloody but slowly. Very, very slowly. He grimaced, fighting the urge to bring a clenched fist up to his kanji to ease the massive headache caused by the insane ramblings of his erstwhile tenant. He was blissfully rattling off his top ten ways to liberate the woman from her vocal cords in gory detail. The tanuki's creativity never failed to disappoint, though as usual his suggestions were adding fuel to an already sparking fire when all he needed was...

His breath caught, and Shukaku's ramblings faded to it's usual background white noise. She was slowly rocking again as the child in her arms reached for those same strands with tiny hands, giggling. It had been abducted during a trade dispute as collateral against an involved shipping mogul. Several high ranked Mist jounin had been rumored as safeguarding the kidnapped party, and their client was more than willing to pay enough to secure the hire of the visiting Sand ninja and the Hokage's apprentice. They had demanded the best. It was a high pay yield snatch and grab that had required minimal technical work, along with a mini vacation in paid travel.

All in all, and at the very least, it was a break from meeting with Leaf's stuffy council, haggling over the wording in a new treaty. As the new Kazekage it was his duty to reenter into an alliance with a formal treaty. Never mind the fact that they already were, and would continue to be allied despite the scrap of paper. There already was a treaty in existence, wasn't the old one good enough? Who cared about the dual meaning of consecrate? Or if it should be in the past tense? She, of course, had thought it all as pointless as he did. And, since she had also been roped into the proceedings, she'd tried skeeving off with him in tow as frequently as the opportunity arose. This had amounted to all of a few impromptu lunches at Ichiraku until the mission request had come in.

That was, he mused, how they ended up where they were. He was hauling a medicine case filled with bloody sand through Fire Country along with his tuneless pseudo wife, a tanuki with permanent cabin fever, and 'their' ridiculously even tempered child. He paused in his thoughts to focus on the lyrics, something about 'sunshine' and 'my only'. Tilting his head to look directly at Sakura, he felt his breath hold once again.

The little boy had crimson red hair and bottle green eyes. It had taken one look at him, wailing in the sandy confusion of his recapture, and quieted to a hiccup, reaching for his arms. Later smiled, and called his codename Daichi 'Da-Da' and Sakura's Machiko 'Ma-Ma'. His hand stretched of it's own volition for his henge disguised tattoo. It had been five days of travel so far. Five days of Sakura beautiful in kimono, five days of safeguarding a child who reached for him after nightmares, five days of her cooking, their smiles, her laughter. They were only two days from Leaf.

Her voice was terrible really. Awful.

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Author's Note:

Forshadowing. Hint hint. Mmmm plotbunnies.   



End file.
